Saturday, December 31, 2005

Are you a survivor who, on touching land, shinesyour flashlight into the sea or are you a rock warning?Like a light seen across wide waters, your cig glowsin the dark before your face appears out of the fog:

the boy, now a man, who described to me a blowjob,what I already knew but let you go on and onfor I saw you enjoyed drawing from me the filamentof illicit thrill (Your wiry dark limbs were my thrill).

The wink of your dare beckoned me whenever I heardof you knocking about from job to job—a surfinstructor on Thai beaches, short-order cookin Hanoi, co-owner of a canoe shop, part-time guide,

and now a roustabout, a proper job this time,you explain, despite its name. You raise offshore oil rigsagainst seaquakes, steel the derrick and crown from whichroughnecks slam the toothed bit into the ocean bed,

pump mud into the pipe to grease the bit and preventcave-ins and blowouts by equalizing bore pressurewith the earth’s. You master the force compressing bonesto crude trapped in the domes of the earth’s scrotum.

Months you slave at sea, then retire to your rented space—a chair, video machine, opened tins on kitchen shelves.The bedroom is the most done up, with king-sized bed,vanity table, woman. Your girlfriend of three years.

Oil rigging is hard work, you flex your arms, but it paysfor this flat and trips to Bali, six months on the beach.You show me, from your window, the oil refinery glowsin the dark, with glimmering towers, balconies and spheres—

your Atlantis. I think of my sterile office with its unforgivinglight; each night I leave it and swim out into the seawhere you already have someone to traverse the girdersof your thighs, her mouth a valve to regulate your gusher.

You are not a lighthouse for passing ships. You loom,a derrick, stapled to the ground, drilling and drawing oiltill it dries. Seen under stars, you are exerting a force equalto the earth’s and burning its fuel for a little heat and light.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

In Bryant Park, a woman walked past me—déjà vu—her bare left foot a bruise as big as her right shoe,traveled with slow, small steps measured by habit, roundthe Starbucks stand and stepped towards my bench again.This time I was ready for her—to imitateher walk in a stumbling meter, interpret her pain.She did not stumble. Her eyes threw me off—black dabsin ovals whiter than the inside of an eggshell.Her face was a patch. She did not make a sound.She was not Death-in-Love and, like that mademoisellefinishing her espresso, meant nothing to me too.

But when I stroke the bolt that locks the metal plateto your shin bone, imagine how the sudden rainblinds the bike, the thundering traffic blunts the stabsof laughter tearing the night air on the Brooklyn Bridgeand how the last possible moment thrusts the yell,“Watch out!”—she pedals, singing, on the hanging ridgeof my back, ringing and ringing her tiny bell.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

What’s on tonight but lips pressed on lips,the neck, the hollow of the collarbone,down on the silver strings from chest to hips,bass guitar counterpointing basement’s groan;and on the stirring cord, lips fawn, and tease,teeth sheathed, to please and worry its backbone:an arctic wolf licking the meat it sees,meat spiked onto a knife, the foam its own.On this white horse, the lancer sits astride.He jerks the bit and bloods its jaws, care thrownto the wind, pain spurring the pleasure-ride,slippery saddle, mounting to one moan -we come together, separate. Tonightblunts hunger’s edge and whets the appetite.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

I hear a man jerking off at the Metand straightaway remember you, O, Jack.I'm flushed with sympathy, to tell the truth,to hear him groan in the next stall for beautycaptured in voluptuous sculptured stone.Who is this restroom seer, lover, man?

From hog farmers of Iowa, a manaspiring to meet his muse? Instead he methis fate of stunning listeners into stoneat Bowery Road Café. Blind, he jacksoff Perseus, in his mind, asserting beautyin holding forth the Gorgon’s heady truth.

Or someone more acquainted with the truthof streets: a skinny kid, almost a man,from Harlem, pricked by the white muscled beautyof Ugolino and his starvelings metbriefly in school? I hear him whimper, Jack,inside his Tower of Hunger, beat off stone.

Or seeing Andromeda chained to stone,the monster squeezing her in coils of truthsprung from the sea, does he forget he’s Jackafloat, on shore leave from his merchantman,imagine flirting chance and courage metto petrify the beast, rescue the Beauty?

Or a priest, drawn against himself to beautycurled in a Cupid, who rebukes the stonein flesh, the flesh in stone and, having methimself, confesses to himself the truth?Or, sick of buzz-saw talk among hard menand licked by dancing Pan, a lumberjack?

Or is he one like me (unlike you, Jack),stirred by a torso's mutilated beauty,an echo of the whole, sufficient manfor him to recreate the missing stone.His moan as he comes, if you want the truth,excites me more than any man I’ve met.

Come back up the river.Come back to Sabahor row me home with you,White Rajah.

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I hope to post at least one new poem a week on this blog. "Song of a Reformed Headhunter" is the title, and the first poem, of a chapbook manuscript I have submitted for the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship Contest. I'd be glad to hear your comments on the poems since they are, always, works-in-progress.

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2015

Lambda Finalist

"The Singapore-born poet’s first UK publication is disciplined yet adventurous in form, casual in tone and deeply personal in subject matter. Koh’s verse addresses the split inheritance of his postcolonial upbringing, as well as the tension between an émigré’s longing for home and rejection of nostalgia." - Maria Crawford in UK's Financial Times